Nianying Wang

A silicon-chip-based 3D metal solenoidal transformer is proposed and developed to achieve AC-DC conversion for integrated power supply applications. With wafer-level micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) fabrication technique to form the metal casting mold and the following micro-casting technique to rapidly (within 6 min) fill molten ZnAl alloy into the pre-micromachined silicon mold, 45-turns primary solenoid and 7-turns secondary solenoid are fabricated in silicon wafers, where the two intertwining solenoids are located at inner deck and outer deck, respectively. Permalloy soft magnetic core is inserted into a pre-etched channel in the silicon chip, which is surrounded by the solenoids. The size of the chip-style transformer is as small as 8.5 mm × 6.6 mm × 2.5 mm. The internal resistance of the primary solenoid is 1.82 Ω and that of the secondary solenoid is 0.16 Ω. The working frequency of the transformer is 60 kHz. Combined with the testing circuit of the switch mode power supply, the DC voltage of 13.02 V is obtained when the input is 110 V at 50 Hz/60 Hz. Furthermore, the on-chip 3D solenoidal transformer is used for lighting four LEDs, which shows great potential for AC-DC power supply. The wafer-level fabricated chip-style solenoidal AC-DC transformer for integrated power supply is advantageous in uniform fabrication, small size and volume applications.

This paper proposes a temperature threshold triggered energy harvester for potential application of heat-event monitoring. The proposed structure comprises an electricity generation cantilever and a bimetallic cantilever that magnetically attract together. When the structure is heated to a pre-set temperature threshold, the heat absorption induced bimetallic effect of the bimetallic cantilever will cause sufficient bending of the generation cantilever to get rid of the magnetic attraction. The action triggers the freed generation cantilever into resonance to piezoelectrically generate electricity, and the heated bimetallic cantilever dissipates heat to the environment. With the heat dissipated, the bimetallic cantilever will be restored to attract with the generation cantilever again and the structure returns to the original state. Under continual heating, the temperature threshold triggered cycle is repeated to intermittently generate electric power. In this paper, the temperature threshold of the harvester is modeled, and the harvester prototype is fabricated and tested. The test results indicate that, with the temperature threshold of 71 °C, the harvesting prototype is tested to generate 1.14 V peak-to-peak voltage and 1.077 μW instantaneous power within one cycle. The thermal harvesting scheme shows application potential in heat event-driven autonomous monitoring.